 In the first seven months of 2007, St Richard’s Hospice in Worcester has raised over £16,000 with Justgiving – a fantastic 31% improvement on the £12,000 that they raised online in the same period of last year. So how have they managed it?
Promoting Justgiving
Justgiving always encourages its members to promote the service to supporters whenever they can, and St Richard’s is a great example of how this pays off. The Fundraising Team takes every opportunity to encourage St Richard’s supporters to try using Justgiving.
Fundraising Manager, Tricia Cavell: “If we talk to people, we really stress the ease of it. By using Justgiving it makes the process much, much easier for them. On our sponsor form, we have a section that says ‘You can now set up a page online with Justgiving’, which we put in all our letters and emails too."
Raising more
Their dedication is producing results. Tricia checks their Justgiving site daily and is thrilled to see more and more supporters setting up fundraising pages. As more of their supporters start using Justgiving to raise money online, St Richard’s is raising more each year. Justgiving’s easy-to-use online tools make it easy for anyone to become a successful fundraiser – there’s no need for technical expertise, just enthusiasm.
“We tell people if they can use email they can set up a page. If I can do it, seriously, anybody can! It’s something I feel confident enough to say is an easy process and give it a go.”
Director of Fundraising, Marilyn Peachey, signed up St Richard’s Hospice with Justgiving in the early days before the subscription fee was introduced. Although she had reservations at the time about the extra charge she recognised that the benefits easily outweighed the costs. “£15 is nothing. I would be quite confident in telling other hospices that it’s the best £15 they could spend. I would say no doubt that it would benefit their fundraising activity.”
Since joining Justgiving in 2003, St Richard’s Hospice has raised an impressive total of £42,000 through using the service, including £7,600 in automatically reclaimed Gift Aid.
“It gives you a better strike rate for Gift Aid with Justgiving. A lot of the things we do with a sponsor form are hugely time consuming. You have to work out donations that are Gift Aid and not Gift Aid. You need a full postal address but everyone puts ‘ditto’ on the form.”
Justgiving’s ability to take donations as easily from other countries as from the UK has provided a further boost to the hospice’s fundraising. All in all St Richard’s is confident it is getting a great return for its Justgiving subscription fee.
Less admin
Not only does Justgiving raise more money for the hospice, it also saves the fundraising team time and cuts out a lot of admin. As well as removing the administration involved with reclaiming Gift Aid, it also helps make sure the hospice keeps on top of looking after its valued supporters.
“Our letters of thanks are very important to us but they take time – with Justgiving they are automatically generated and sent immediately."
Tricia was able to use the benefits of Justgiving for securing sponsorship for herself when she set up a fundraising page for the Flora London Marathon in 2003, raising a great deal of funds through the site.
“I realised how easy it had been, how useful, how much pressure it took off me as a fundraiser. I was surprised at who sponsored me – people I barely knew.”
Justgiving strives to provide exemplary support to all its users and we’re delighted when we get feedback from members like St Richard’s Hospice, letting us know how much they enjoy working with us. It spurs us on to keep improving the service.
“We’ve had good feedback from our fundraisers who have contacted the Justgiving helpdesk, saying how brilliant they’d been. If I have a query, or there’s some information I’m looking for, I know I’ll find it. I know if I pick up the phone I’ll get an immediate answer. I feel there has been a relationship built. There’s a two-way process with Justgiving.” |
